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Why is the industry so secretive about sales numbers?

KDR_11k

KDR_11k

Banned
Nov 10, 2017
5,235
When a new movie comes out you have studios crowing from the rooftops how much they make at the box office and what the budget was. With games it seems like all of that is top secret and if anyone finds out the industry tries to plug that leak ASAP. Why? Why the secrecy?
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,393
I'd say movies are fairly unique in that regard. I wouldn't look at it necessarily as 'it's weird that games don't do this' but rather 'it's kinda weird that movie studios do this'.

You never hear about what the budget of your favourite bands new album was. Why should we, as consumer, care what the budget was?
 
Kyougar

Kyougar

Cute Animal Whisperer
Member
Nov 3, 2017
9,367
Because most games sell on Hype. And if you tell people you are successful often enough, they will believe it (until they buy the mediocre game or the game without any multiplayer matches)
 
riotous

riotous

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,358
Seattle
Film industry doesn't tell you how much they make from digital sales, rentals, and all kinds of revenue sources.

If an industry is releasing figures it's likely because they don't have full control over the data and the data would come out anyways.
 
Yuntu

Yuntu

Prophet of Regret
Member
Nov 7, 2019
10,733
Germany
To control the narrative. With how many do it currently you share what you have to share (which is mostly overall income) and that's it. If they do have a sales success then many do point it out for good PR.

I actually don't think outside of movies many industries are that open about their budgets on things.
 
TechnicPuppet

TechnicPuppet

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,843
KDR_11k said:
When a new movie comes out you have studios crowing from the rooftops how much they make at the box office and what the budget was. With games it seems like all of that is top secret and if anyone finds out the industry tries to plug that leak ASAP. Why? Why the secrecy?
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Where do you see how much people actually buy a seat for each film?
 
Gamer @ Heart

Gamer @ Heart

Member
Oct 26, 2017
9,655
KDR_11k said:
When a new movie comes out you have studios crowing from the rooftops how much they make at the box office and what the budget was. With games it seems like all of that is top secret and if anyone finds out the industry tries to plug that leak ASAP. Why? Why the secrecy?
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Studios absolutely do not tout what their budgets are, and those few estimates we do learn about almost never include promotion and publishing costs which often times is as much as the movie itself. Add to that the fact that box office is just one source of revenue from a movies life cycle, and no studio open talks about those.

The only reason we know box office returns is because there are systems in place that easily keep track of it, because it's how revenue splits work between studios and chains. It also determines how many screens that movie retains every week as the ticket split changes.

Games have none of that. A game bombing doesn't mean it's out of Walmart shelves in a month. It also makes tracking harder because over time, games are no longer sold at full price, and used sales can't be tracked. There is no complicated revenue system in place that necessitates super detailed tracking, because publishers sell at wholesale to stores, and digital sales have a flat % fee off the top.

And the reason leaks are stamped out is because NPD is a business and that data is literally their product they sell access to for ten to hundreds of thousands of dollars to per month depending on what the company buying it wants access to.
 
ToxicPhantom

ToxicPhantom

Member
Jan 6, 2020
38
Texas
I question it too. I have no interest in sale numbers because they do nothing for me.

I dont get excited and run the streets yelling, "HEY EVERYONE X GAME/MOVIE GOT X REVENUE! WOOHOO!!!"

No matter what the numbers are, I have no control what's going to happen next.
 
Ojli

Ojli

Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,652
Sweden
As stated, movies are the odd ones. Unsure what other industry does that, and then I do not only look at the media industries but also others like dairy and petrochemicals. The car industry does somewhat state sales numbers (but maybe that's only for Tesla, never seen a Citroën press release of specific sales numbers)
 

Deleted member 37233

Banned
Jan 2, 2018
10,699
Not everyone in the industry is that secretive with it's sales data. Nintendo for example shares them in great detail, even when they're bad.
 
Kthulhu

Kthulhu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,670
Probably because it looks better to investors. A lot of game companies brag when they have a hit. Not disclosing it normally lets them hide games that aren't hits or failures from kneejerk investors.
 

Deleted member 10737

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
49,774
i wish everyone did it like capcom and nintendo, constantly updating sales numbers for most of their titles.
 
Kthulhu

Kthulhu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,670
ghostcrew said:
I'd say movies are fairly unique in that regard. I wouldn't look at it necessarily as 'it's weird that games don't do this' but rather 'it's kinda weird that movie studios do this'.

You never hear about what the budget of your favourite bands new album was. Why should we, as consumer, care what the budget was?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'd argue it makes the consumer more informed on the state of the industry and games business which is a good thing philosophically and it might result in better funding for certain titles since their numbers would be public knowledge.

Plus units sold is way easier for the average person to understand vs complex computer science so it might create more empathy between the players and the developers.
 

Deleted member 32563

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 11, 2017
1,336
I think meeting shareholder's expectations is more or a priority than satisfying the curiosity of forum members.

Want numbers. Invest of pay for NPD. Outside of meeting consumers wants is aside from the inner workings. At least from there perspective.
 
Komo

Komo

Info Analyst
Verified
Jan 3, 2019
7,110
ghostcrew said:
I'd say movies are fairly unique in that regard. I wouldn't look at it necessarily as 'it's weird that games don't do this' but rather 'it's kinda weird that movie studios do this'.

You never hear about what the budget of your favourite bands new album was. Why should we, as consumer, care what the budget was?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean for bands we know the producers and we know if their expensive or not, but with games we hear about budgets, but when sales come into account. Literally nothing. I feel like this secrecy is because companies really over play how much something sold.
 
ghostcrew

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost
Administrator
Oct 27, 2017
30,393
Komo said:
I mean for bands we know the producers and we know if their expensive or not, but with games we hear about budgets, but when sales come into account. Literally nothing. I feel like this secrecy is because companies really over play how much something sold.
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There's a lot more that goes into an albums production budget than paying for a producer. That's like saying that the games lead designer wages are the only thing on a games budget.
 
Nano-Nandy

Nano-Nandy

Member
Mar 26, 2019
2,302
Even for movies, we ususlly get estimates that may ir may not include advertising; and barely if never get actual numbers on how much is needed to break even. Neither we get numbers from home sales, rentals or digital.

We do get more numbers though. NPD went from giving out every number possible in the early days to barely a listing based on dollar value and combined. Sucks but it is what it is.
 
Smash-It Stan

Smash-It Stan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,285
Because then you find out the developers don't see most of that money and gives publishers room to lie.

Like how Ubisoft said The Division 2 exceeded goals when it went to the epic games store and said it was doing well, then 6 months later said it failed.
 
Jaded Alyx

Jaded Alyx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
35,433
nekkid said:
Why are gamers so obsessed with them?
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Hu3 said:
This. I don't understand the need to know and the obsession to know how many copies of a game where sold. Is irrelevant information that doesn't impact me in any way.
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Never wondered why some sequels were never made, or why some consoles never received certain titles? Why some publishers closed down or developers were bought etc?

Why SEGA stopped making consoles or why the videogame crash happened?

Or conversely why some games continue to receive sequels, why some consoles get more games than others, etc. etc. etc.
 
EvilBoris

EvilBoris

Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest
Verified
Oct 29, 2017
16,693
Because it's not relevant to consumers unless you are bragging and want to use it as a metric for quality or value.
Which is when it is used, as a marketing point.
 
ReyVGM

ReyVGM

Author - NES Endings Compendium
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
5,442
They don't want you to know how much money they actually make, or else their workers might revolt over crappy pay.
 
Cyanity

Cyanity

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,345
Because you don't have to worry about queuing into an empty lobby to watch movies you paid for :P
 
skeezx

skeezx

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,224
most of it is "tradition"... example if Disney could spin on Solo hitting it out of the park with some vague press release they'd do it, nobody (investors particularly) like a loser. but the established infrastructure forces studios to come clean

games are still an inchoate medium, add digital/physical discrepancies to the mix it gets more murky. i don't expect this to ever change, at least while i'm relatively young
 
Nome

Nome

Designer / Self-requested ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
3,312
NYC
The reason is pretty simple: data is valuable.

If your numbers are bad, you're embarrassed, and you don't want to release them.
If your numbers are good, you want to keep them secret, so your competitors don't know what to prioritize.

Sales numbers are a very small, relatively innocuous bit of data, but they can still be very telling. There are much more valuable types of data to protect, such as marketing data. Since I work in mobile, I'll give y'all an example of how precious this is in my industry--

Because games are constantly churning users, in order to maintain revenue, developers are constantly spending money to acquire fresh users, usually through serving ads. Let's say that your average user is worth a lifetime value (LTV) of $10. This means that in order to be profitable, each new user you acquire must cost less than $10.

The creative (AKA the advertisement) that's delivered to a viewer can be the determinant of that cost. Because you can't predict user reception, and because the market is constantly shifting, big companies like King, Peak, and Playrix generate and run hundreds of creatives each week, some with minimal changes like call-to-action placement or copy differences. These creatives are run against each other on ad networks and evaluated, with the winning changes then compiled for the next cohort of creatives. The difference between a good and bad creative is stark--given that $10 LTV, a cost-per-install of $1 on a good creative means a $9 profit, and a CPI of $20 on a bad creative means you just lost $10.

This sort of data is invaluable, and knowing what creatives work and don't work can make or break a company, so this data is held in utmost secrecy. Give me a 90 day retention chart for a game and I will tell you within 5 minutes what's wrong with the game. It's powerful stuff.
 
evilmonkey

evilmonkey

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,481
Canada
It's to hide how much and how quickly games are getting devalued. For instance some still think Bayonetta 1 was a success for selling 1.5 million copies, when the majority of those units were sold at bargain bin prices.
 
Tyaren

Tyaren

Character Artist
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
24,860
They are not secretive about good sales numbers. ;)
I guess they don't want people to know what big of a flop their game was, because it might deter even more potential buyers.
 
SpaceCrystal

SpaceCrystal

Banned
Apr 1, 2019
7,714
There's no real reason for them to.

I remember when Aquamarine used to post NPD sales, though she was forced to stop doing it. I bet that the company that she worked for was behind it, & probably because that they don't want that info revealed anymore.
 
thisismadness

thisismadness

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,453
There's actually not many industries that report individual product sales. Even within the movie industry the Box Office is unique.. they tend to operate exactly like the game industry when it comes to reporting physical/digital sales and rentals. The streaming platforms are all just black holes of data, unless there is a good marketing reason to share. The numbers that are available are usually put together by companies like NPD and Nielsen that conducxt retail surveys.

The rest of the tech industry is the same. And when they do report numbers for quarterly reports, they tend to group products together. Apple was one of the few that did and they recently announced they would not provide numbers any longer.
 
Dr Doom

Dr Doom

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,028
Didn't it start during the PS3 vs 360
Sony flex and told NPD not to share the numbers anymore
 
Mechaplum

Mechaplum

Enlightened
Member
Oct 26, 2017
18,848
JP
Walken said:
Yes and no. Good sales likely means the studio has an easier time getting a green light to make a sequel. When you are really good they might even let you make something new.
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Of course, but still doesn't really affect my enjoyment of a game. I could enjoy God of War or Baba is You just as equally without know anything about their sales numbers. Sure if I like the game and there will be a sequel I might think of getting it, but there are so many games out there for it to actually affect me.
 
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